The Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals
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The MDGs 4 and 6 have an impact on the health, socio-economic and environmental issues. There was need to address the environmental causes of diseases such as Malaria to significantly reduce the number of new infections. Child mortality and infection with HIV and other disease also had a socioeconomic burden because families lose their productive time and finances in caring for the ill. HIV infection had the strongest relationship with the economy due to the large number of orphans. The international community listed these two goals in 2000 to improve the socioeconomic, health and environmental incidences creating the problem.
The MDG goal concerned with lowering childhood mortality has its roots with the substantial extent of premature death rate before 2000. It is reported that in 2000, eleven million children below five years died. It also indicated that one hundred and forty other children suffered malnutrition and were underweight. Out of the eleven million deaths, 5 million died from HIV and tuberculosis and almost all these deaths occurred in the developing world. Death and illnesses have a socioeconomic impact. The international community recognized child mortality had significant impact on the health and development of respective countries (Wagstaff & Claeson, 2004).
Improving child health has a direct correlation with economic wellbeing. It is because when children are ill, the entire family gets locked in the financial toll through costs associated t health care and time that may be used in generating income. It is important that countries invest in healthcare because it serves a primary role in breaking the cycle of poverty. Research indicates that health investments made between 1965 and 1990 account for the fifty percent difference in growth rate between Africa and other parts of the world (Dodd & Cassels, 2006).
The international community identified the need to prioritize child health within the overall development and economic policies. The need for addressing broad determinants of ill health such as low levels of education, poverty, unhealthy environment and reducing high-risk behavior became imperative. To address these underlying issues affecting child health and mortality resource mobilization is critical. The amount of aid to developing countries for health between 1997 and 1999 totaled to $64000 million. The international community needed to boost the amount of development assistance for health to low-income countries. In 2002, low-income countries received $8100 million. This is an increase from the levels that were registered in 1999 (Dodd & Cassels, 2006).
Focus on the MDG concerned with combating HIV/AIDs and other diseases arose in the 1990s. The international community got alarmed by the increasing mortality in the developing countries as a result of AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases. The initiatives such as UNAIDS and the Global fund that aimed at combating AIDS, TB and Malaria were imperative in addressing the challenge. At the end of the 1990s, the international community realized that there was need to do more to eradicate the diseases. The Millennium summit in 2001 attended by 147 states approved the MDGs that would provide guidance on combating the disease burden.
AIDS had devastating economic impacts particularly on low-income countries. Countries like Zambia were greatly hit because HIV drastically reduced the number of teachers available to teach in schools. Reports in 2004 indicated that the country was losing half of its trained teachers to AIDS (Wagstaff & Claeson, 2004). Activists claimed that controlling neglected tropical diseases, malaria, TB and AIDS was significant in reducing poverty. The tropical diseases are common infections among the poor. For instance, reports indicate that a quarter of all poor people are infected with soil-transmitted helminths. Others are infected with trachoma, and other parasitic infections, which implies that the poor are at imminent risk of disability, or premature death (Allen & Parker, 2011).
From the 1990 baseline for the MDGs, to date, there has been a 50 percent decrease in child deaths. The success can be attributed to implementation of evidence based, creating enabling health and multisectoral policies, as well as cost effective investments and interventions (Kuruvilla, et al., 2014). Despite the successes, the child mortality rates remain problematic. Reports indicate that 6.6 million child mortality cases are reported each year. The children die before reaching 5 years and 44 percent of the 6.6 million are newborn deaths (Kuruvilla, et al., 2014). A 2006 survey indicated that child-health interventions do not have an encouraging pattern. The median coverage of important preventive and curative interventions for improving child survival remains between 20 and 25 percent (Dodd & Cassels, 2006).
Children fewer than five mortality has been slow and is even slower in Sub-Saharan Africa where no country is on track to reach the target. High-income countries account for only one percent of the eleven million under five deaths that occur each year. 42 percent of the deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia has more than half of the undernourished children globally. There is need to improve preventative and treatment interventions. For example increasing the level of breastfeeding among mothers to 95 percent, would result in a reduction of under-five death by 63 percent (Wagstaff & Claeson, 2004).
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